Hmm - I know I'm going to be flamed for this but here goes. Heard someone on the radio recently reminding us that the theme of a wedding should be marriage. Just that. That said, my BF used local shells to decorate/name her tables and very pretty they looked. See - I'm not much use!

I'm thinking about naming my tables related to the guests at each particular table. Knowing my friends and family they would love that personal touch. For example the table of DPs uni mates will be named something like the halls of residence where they all met, or it could be as simple as "The Browns" for a table of relations.

Either that or names after cheeses as I'm a total cheese fiend and abstaining for the year before my wedding, culminating in a massive cheesy wig-out on the day.

I think its nicer than numbers (as someone has mentioned - potentially a 'ranking' situ) and not cheesy at all (see what I did there?)

DP and I are really into cycling and I was half considering naming tables by parts of a bike. It is a bit fraught with danger though (or provides scope for mischief, depending on how you look at it ): who should we sit at 'bottom bracket' 'cranks' or 'big dog'? Maybe if I can come up with enough insulting names for each table it would even out?

We had different childhood sweeties as the table names, then we put a bowl of those sweets on each table. The "flying saucers" table ate theirs the fastest. The only ones left were on the "sherbert lemons". The hardest part was picking the sweets. (we found a retro sweets on-line shop and bought a load)

A wedding I went to recently had characters from In the Night Garden as their table names - the pontipines, the tombliboos etc. They have a 1yo dd. I was a bit about that but I think some of the ideas on this thread are rather lovely.